‘At the hospital?’
‘Aye.’ She plugged in a kettle. ‘Cuppa straight off. I need one.’
‘Anything I can do, Sister?’
‘Just sit out of my road, lass.’ She set a tea-tray on the kitchen table. ‘You got out in time this afternoon. You’d not been gone twenty minutes ‒’ she dived into the fridge for milk, ‘didn’t you hear the sirens?’
‘Sirens? No?’ I felt ill. ‘Fire?’
‘Round the corner from here. No. You’d not’ve heard down by the harbour. Wind’s in the wrong direction. Ambulance call. Mr Moray went out. Usual stuff. Washing left to dry round unguarded fire. Little lad, same age as our Susannah. Poor little mite had made himself a tent.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Aye.’ She switched off the kettle and made the tea. ‘Gone before they got him into ambulance. Mr Moray’d to carry him straight into morgue. Mother’s in Haralda with acute shock. Poor little lass ‒ just out of school herself. Incomers. Hubby works on a rig.’ She studied me shrewdly. ‘Have you seen Mr Moray this evening?’
‘Yes.’ I told her how and where.
‘He needed a breather.’ She poured the tea. ‘Has he ever talked to you about his private life?’
‘Only this evening. He ‒ he said you knew.’
‘That’s right.’ She sat opposite me. ‘Tell you the age of his wife?’ I shook my head. ‘Nineteen. Their little lad was a year.’
‘He just said ‒ family.’
‘Oh aye. Drink your tea.’ She sipped hers. ‘Nappies left too near the fire. No guard. Mother and child asleep. Poor daft young lass. Gone to bed. Hubby working on night-call. Senior House-Surgeon, he was then. One of the Glasgow hospitals. Old block of flats ‒ went up like tinder. Cops had to fetch him out to identify his own. Seven in all. Sup up! This was ten years back! Ten years of hard work are good healers. I’m not saying scar’s not still there. Scar tissue can stay tender more years than the ten unless gently handled ‒ but happen you’ll know summat about that for yourself. That’s right.’ She answered my unspoken question. ‘That Norwegian Captain told me you’d lost your lad to the sea. You’ve not had it easy, but there’s not many do.’ She refilled her cup. ‘First year of the war I lost the lad I was to wed. Medical registrar. Good lad. He’d have made a good physician. Went down on a hospital ship. Wicked waste of too many good lads. And me ‒ I thought end of world had come. So it had ‒ end of that world. Didn’t know which way to go, but seeing there’s only the one way, I went on up road.’ She paused, reflectively. ‘So many different worlds one has, lass, so many different lives. Happen you’ve to be my age to understand that. That’s more like it!’ She refilled my cup then stomped round her neat kitchen shaking packets of dried vegetables into saucepans. ‘Didn’t you wonder our Mr Moray’s not wed seeing he’s turned thirty-five?’
‘I thought ‒ probably too busy and ‒ well ‒ I had the impression perhaps he and Sister Pringle ‒’
‘Not alone in that! No place like a hospital for daft tongues that’ll wag both ends and middle. Wagging all out now, I’ll be bound. He’ll have told you she was once wed?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d not heard from young Harding?’
‘No.’
‘I’m glad there’s more than the one right thinking lad around. Past is past. Place for dirty slops is down lav. And as I’ve just said to Sister Haralda, I’ll take no truck from none over Jenny Pringle’s right to keep her private life private. If she’d no wish to tell us ‒ why should she? No youngsters. She’s free to wed again as the next lass ‒ why shouldn’t she please herself? All she’s done since she came to Thessa is get on with job, keep herself to herself ‒ aye ‒ and spout this lib nonsense! Not that I’m saying it’s all nonsense ‒ some is, some isn’t! But I’ll not fault her for spouting seeing she’s the guts to practise what she preaches and face fact that one price tag on liberation is loneliness. Happens she prefers that to marriage. She’ll not be first nor last woman to discover a wedding ring goes round the throat as well as the finger, but there weren’t so many before her time ‒ and yours ‒ as could afford to indulge her preference. Liberation,’ she added drily, ‘comes low on list of priorities headed by starvation, and that was the lot many a woman without a man to support her could expect in our country up to time I was born. Good old days my Aunt Fanny! Good, maybe for the ten per cent “haves”. Not for the ninety per cent “have-nots”. Just take nurses. Seven quid a quarter my first year ‒ sixty-six hour week. Fifty pounds a year when I was a young staff nurse ‒ same hours. But a job, a career of sorts. Times change, as they should, so now that career’ll let Jenny Pringle live a decent life as a single woman ‒ not wealthy mind, but not on breadline. Maybe that’s how she’ll stay, maybe not. And if there’s any who thought to change her mind ‒ I’m not saying there is and I’m not saying there’s not ‒ that’s his problem not hers, isn’t it?’ She was now slamming on saucepan lids and feverishly switching on hot plates. ‘You could do worse than take a leaf out of her book.’
‘I could, Sister?’
‘Oh, aye. Do as she has and remember before you buy owt with your life, take a good look at the price tag and be sure you fancy settling bill. Because fancy it or not, if you buy one thing’s sure ‒ one day the bill’ll drop on mat for you to pick up. Just you. Your life. You’re the one that’ll have to pay the bill ‒ same as the rest of us have to pay ours. That sounds like my menfolk!’ She opened the door. ‘Right then, you two! Supped your drams for the night? Come on and meet our Charlotte!’
Later, Sister and her husband walked me home. It was a very dark, gusty night, and when I reached my room I had to close the windows quickly to prevent them blowing off the hinges. The sea growled in the Sound and crashed on to the black beach. Only two stars were visible through the low, scudding, ceiling of cloud and two more, landbased, flashed in turn from the lighthouses. I stared at the flashes in the hope that they would mesmerize me into sleep. I was very tired, but my mind was too restless for rest and when I did get to sleep I had such a ghastly nightmare about a fire that I woke, soaked in sweat, before dawn and daren’t let myself go back to sleep in case it returned.
It was my last op day and we had a long theatre list. I was off in mid-afternoon as it was my late evening shift. I had a hairdressing appointment, then took myself out to tea in a cafe I had not yet visited. The waitress told me she was an Orcadian and asked if I had enjoyed my holiday. ‘Not found Thessa too quiet? That’s great! You must come back again!’ I kept up the act and said I’d be back next year.
The theatre was still working when I took over Olaf at six. It was roughly another hour before the list finished with one of our new patients, a Mrs Burns’s varicose veins. Magnus and Alan came up and did their rounds together, then Alan stayed to deal with the notes. He settled in one of the desk chairs as I replaced the ward stethoscope and blood-pressure machine on a shelf. He smiled wearily when I told him about the Orcadian waitress. ‘Next time over remember to bring your knitting.’
‘I’ll do that.’ I picked up a diagram Magnus had made before he left. ‘From this, she’d more ulcer than stomach.’
‘That’s a fact. Let’s have that.’ He clipped it to the bed-ticket. ‘I was just trying to remember how many tucks he took in the anastomosis. Three it was as here.’ He glanced up. ‘And what do you think of our Jenny?’
‘Can’t say there’s been time.’ I sat beside him and opened the report book.
‘You’d no idea?’ I shook my head. ‘I’d have thought Rod Harding would have tipped you a wee hint.’
‘Do you go round unburdening your life and hard times to casual fellow travellers?’
‘Maybe not. Have you seen him yet?’
‘Sister Haralda says I can either look in tomorrow evening or Saturday morning for five minutes.’
‘Make it tomorrow before your party. Not till nine. Saturday morning you’ll have too much of a head to see anything but the Alka Seltzer.’ He wrote a page of notes in silence, reached
for the blotting paper as his ballpoint was new. ‘And what do you make of Magnus’s decision to spend next week fishing over with the Blacks? Up to the start of last week he was heading back to his ain folk in Gairlie this weekend. Think he’s decided to hang around and see which way the lovely Jenny jumps?’
‘Could be. Or could be he just likes fishing.’ I ruled a red line under a name. ‘Shove over the D.D. book, Alan. It’s under your lot.’
He shifted bed-tickets to expose the Dangerous Drug book and pushed it my way. ‘There’s word in Haralda that her man’s still sold on her. Which way do you think she’ll jump?’
‘Sorry, dear, didn’t bring my crystal ball to Thessa. I’ll pack it with the knitting next time.’
‘You do that!’ He went back to his notes.
My shift finished at ten. From nine onwards I was on alone with one of the married part-time staff nurses, and between us we settled the entire ward for sleep and turned off the main lights. At about a quarter to ten I did my final round of the day before adding the last comments to the report and handing over to the night staff at ten. The children’s ward was empty again and in darkness, but both main wards were dimly rose-coloured by their red night lights. I walked slowly from bed to bed just as I had in more wards and on more occasions than I could possibly count, but with the most peculiar sensation of doing it for the first time and in a way that was right. It was the first time in my life that I could recall, that I had performed an action in the absolute certainty that it was one I would never again repeat. That certainty sharpened my senses.
I heard with a new clarity the sounds of a ward settling into the night. The sighs, the snores, the clicks of false teeth, the occasional incoherent mutter of a post-anaesthetic dreamer, the regular little snorts Angus made when flat out, the creak of bed-springs as a sleeper turned, the faint jangle of an orthopaedic weight, and the soft swish of air through the ventilators. The air came in warmed but still salty, and mixed with the aura of anaesthetic hanging over the beds of the patients on that day’s theatre list, and the smell of clean linen, and surgical spirits, and talcum powder, and sweat, and floor polish.
After my round of the women I stood at their front window thinking of Mrs Leisk, Mrs Torens, Mrs Laurensen, and already so many other women who for a few days had been my great friends going out of my life as abruptly as they had entered it. The night was much rougher. I watched the black sea churning in the Sound, pounding on to the rocks, and thought about the men on the rigs one hundred or so miles out, and then a Tex Collis, Danny, Johannes, and the other alien young men, and the neither young nor to me alien Mr Smythe, and his harmless delight in the artistic temperament. The churning sea dragged my thoughts back to the men at sea at that moment. From that higher window I saw for the first time the lighthouse lights were not, as I had thought, flashing on and off, but swinging round in complete circles. The misleading moment of darkness came when the light was on the far side. I thought of Harriet Ryan in her sheltered berth and came close to praying she would stay there in peace until morning. Only close, as I had not prayed since Doug died.
Back in the office my colleague told me Mrs Ferguson was on our shift in Haralda. I said I thought she must be anxious as hell for her husband on nights like this.
‘I’ve no doubt she’s often cause for great anxiety though she never speaks of it. None of the lifeboatmen’s womenfolk will ever do that. Not that this is what we’d call a bad night, Staff. A wee bit rough, maybe.’ She smiled indulgently. ‘When it’s really wild, many’s the time you’d think this hospital could be torn from its foundations by the wind ‒ and they’re in rock.’
The wind slackened during the night and came back next day with the tide. By lunchtime there was a Force 9 gale warning for all areas of the North Sea. Magnus stopped on the stairs on his way down from Olaf as I was returning from my meal. ‘The steamer’s been slightly delayed but I’ve just heard she’s been sighted approaching the southern entrance. Almost certainly a gale of this force’ll have blown itself out before you sail tomorrow, but if you’d like some anti-sea-sickness tablets, I can let you have some tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Might be a good idea, thanks ‒ in lieu of paper bags.’
‘Indeed.’ We smiled as if I had made the joke of the century and went our separate ways. He did not come back to Olaf during the remainder of my time on-duty.
Sister returned to take over and sweep me off at five to five. ‘I’ll not bid you goodbye as I don’t fancy the word and I’ll be seeing you later. Thanks for all you’ve done. You’ve worked well and I’ve enjoyed having you. Anytime you want to work with me again, you’ll be welcome, but I don’t see that day coming. New sister’s uniform waiting for you in London? Oh, aye. Off you go, then, young Sister Victoria ‒ and don’t you dare forget what I’ve told you of our profession! Up to your lot now, lass! Mind you make summat out of it ‒ summat you can be proud to hand on when your time comes ‒ as it will ‒ and I don’t only mean make summat out of it for nurses!’ She propped her starched cuffs on the desk and rolled up her sleeves, reflectively. ‘There’s no doubt my lot was pushed around too much, worked too hard, too long, for damn all in pay packet and no status ‒ outside the wards. But I’ll say this, lass, in our patients’ eyes my lot had all the status we could wish. When I was a young staff nurse, a young pro ‒ and we were pros not students ‒ I never knew the patient not ready to back up, help out, stand up for the nurse against the sisters, the doctors, the lot! Maybe we sweated our guts out for ’em, but they knew it, and they loved us for it! Aye. Loved. And that love is one legacy my lot’ve handed on to yours ‒ mind you do the same. And mind you remember ‒’ she added really fiercely, ‘when you hear ‒ as we’ll keep on hearing ‒ folk in our own profession crabbing at Miss Nightingale and “lady with lamp” image ‒ mind you remember that woman single-handed transformed nursing from a job for drunken old tarts, to a profession for women respected the world over! And she did it with soap, water, fresh air and guts! That’s all she had when she went to Crimea and in Scutari Hospital she ‒ just she ‒ cut down death rate amongst British soldiers from forty to two per cent ‒ an’ that’s an historical fact! Is that an image to be ashamed of? And as for the lamp ‒ seeing the hospital had no electricity or gas ‒ how else could she’ve seen on her night rounds without carrying damned lamp? You’ll not’ve forgotten how many of those poor lads in Crimea had dysentery! And don’t you forget ‒’ she smiled apologetically, ‘and thanks for hearing me out. Happen, as many another old nurse, I feel a mite strongly over what’s happening in our profession right now! You sort ’em ‒ and get out from under my feet as I’ve a ward to run!’
On the stairs I nearly knocked down Magnus coming up the last flight from the hall. ‘Off? Glad I’ve caught you. I was on my way up for that purpose. Mr Black’s just battled his way over with some path. specimens he wants flown to the mainland for testing, says he’s not sailing back until the gale drops and my brother-in-law and sister are putting him up for the night. I’ve just had tea with them all. The subject of your party came up ‒ Mr Black’s had an invitation and is hoping to join you all around ten-thirty. He’s kindly offered to let me off the hook to do the same for an hour first. I’ve just rung across to the Home to ask your hostess if they’ll mind my taking back my refusal, but the housekeeper said they’re all away just now having their hair done. Alan Donald’s just left to have his cut. Thessa hairdressers are doing overtime on your party! Will you mind explaining my position to the girls when they let you in on the surprise?’
‘With pleasure! Jolly splendid!’ My girlie boarding-school enthusiasm sounded nauseating but was good protective colouring. ‘How’s Mr Black’s partner with ’flu?’
‘Much annoyed to discover it’s merely a mild head cold. He’d diagnosed himself and being a physician couldn’t initially contemplate suffering from anything so trivial.’
‘Typical! If physicians have to admit to anything less than carcinomatosis or coronaries i
n themselves they always feel they’ve to hand back their M.R.C.P.s. Jolly good! I’ll look forward to seeing you and Mr Black in rota later ‒ oh, no!’ Mrs Brown had cannoned out of her office. ‘Something’s on! I knew it!’
Mrs Brown stopped on one foot. ‘I was about to get switchboard to bleep for you, Mr Moray. Lifeboat call,’ she added as we hurried down. ‘A Portuguese ship has broken down off Valla. No doctor. Two injured seamen and the Captain’s wife, advanced pregnancy, a fall. We’ll need to send two.’
‘Yes. I’ll go. Alan’s just gone out, but Mr Black’s over at the Fraser’s. He’ll come in for me. Which Sister ‒ Sister Pringle’s off ‒ och no!’
‘No,’ echoed Mrs Brown. ‘She’s not a midwife. The only three on my staff this evening are Sisters Olaf, Haralda and myself. We could ask the Mat. Hospital ‒’
I broke in. Only God knew why. ‘I’m still on your staff, Mrs Brown, and off.’
Magnus turned to me quickly but said nothing. Mrs Brown nodded thankfully. ‘Of course you are! Yes. It would save time and help as the Sisters and I are on-duty. So you and Nurse Anthony, Mr Moray?’
‘Ye-es.’ He sounded hesitant until just then we heard the first maroon. ‘Right. I’ll bring the bags and pick you up at the Home in five minutes, Staff. Thick trousers, sweater, jacket, boots.’
The rush left no time for thought or emotion. I began undressing in the Home front hall and astonished the waiting Kirsty by stepping out of the lift in bra and pants. I charged into my room, explaining over my shoulder. She charged in after me and fielded my uniform as I dived into my half-packed suitcase for clothes and the one pair of boots I had brought up and hardly ever used. I finished dressing going down in the lift and got out of the front door as Magnus swept up in a borrowed car, and leant over to open the door for me keeping the engine running and the clutch down. He had our medical bags on the back seat and still wore his professional suit, under his suede jacket and fishing waders. He drove as fast as safety and the law allowed through the town and down to the harbour. ‘Valla is one of a group of small uninhabited islands approximately twenty miles north of Thessa. The Portuguese ship is called Miranda Nova.’
In Storm and In Calm Page 18
